Those Wild Wyndhams (59 page)

8
. MacCarthy,
The Last Pre-Raphaelite
, p.
308
.

9
. Mackail and Wyndham,
Life and Letters
,
1
.
21.

10
. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour,
16
August
1895
(
Letters
, pp.
138
–
9
).

11
. Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham,
14
October
1880
, Stanway Papers.

12
. Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham,
3
June
1885
, Stanway Papers.

13
. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, diary entry,
9
January
1895
, quoted in Longford,
Pilgrimage of Passion
, p.
310
.

14
. Asquith,
Haply I May Remember
, p.
135
.

15
. Alfred Lyttelton to Mary Gladstone,
31
December
1886
, quoted in Nancy Waters Ellenberger, ‘The Souls: High Society and Politics in Late Victorian England’, PhD thesis, University of Oregon,
1982
, pp.
62
–
3
.

16
. Mabell, Countess of Airlie,
Thatched with Gold: The Memoirs of Mabell, Countess of Airlie
, ed. and arranged by Jennifer Ellis (Hutchinson,
1962
), p.
40
.

17
. George Wyndham to Madeline Wyndham,
15
October
1874
, Petworth Papers.

18
. Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham,
4
September
1883
, Stanway Papers.

19
. Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham,
19
November
1876
, Petworth Papers.

20
. Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham,
7
December
1889
, Stanway Papers.

21
. Mackail and Wyndham,
Life and Letters
,
1
.
26.

22
. Ibid.,
1
.
24
.

23
. Dakers,
Clouds
, p.
45
; Mackail and Wyndham,
Life and Letters
,
1
.
24
.

24
. Philip Burne-Jones to Mary Elcho quoted in Dakers,
Clouds
, p.
176
.

25
. Mackail and Wyndham,
Life and Letters
,
1
.
21
.

26
. Walter Crane in
Transactions of the National Association for the Advancement of Art and its Application to Industry
, quoted in Mary Greensted (ed.),
An Anthology of the Arts and Crafts Movement: Writings by Ashbee, Lethaby, Gimson and their Contemporaries
(Aldershot, Lund Humphries,
2005
), p.
18
.

27
. See, for example, the Victoria and Albert Museum’s résumé of Beerbohm Tree at
http://www.vam.ac.uk/users/node/
8593
.

28
. Mackail and Wyndham,
Life and Letters
,
1
.
27
–
8
.

29
. Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham,
6
October
1880
, Stanway Papers.

30
. Dakers,
Clouds
, p.
42
.

31
. Ibid., p.
47
.

32
. Ibid., p.
48
. The equivalent in RPI is £
7
,
719
,
000
; in ESV £
64
,
500
,
00
; and in EPV £
122
,
700
,
000
.

33
. Mackail and Wyndham,
Life and Letters
,
1
.
31
.

34
. Dakers,
Clouds
, p.
44
.

35
. Ibid., p.
48
.

36
. Mary Elcho, diary entry,
16
September
1878
, quoted in Dakers,
Clouds
, p.
114
.

37
. Quoted in Geoffrey Wheatcroft,
The Strange Death of Tory England
(Penguin Books,
2005
), p.
31
.

38
. Lawrence James,
The Rise and Fall of the British Empire
(Abacus,
1995
), p.
196
.

39
. Ibid., p.
198
.

40
. Ibid., pp.
196
–
7
.

41
. Ibid., pp.
196
–
9
.

42
. Mackail and Wyndham,
Life and Letters
,
1
.
11
.

43
. Mackail and Wyndham,
Life and Letters
,
1
.
32
.

44
. Ellenberger, ‘Constructing George Wyndham’, pp.
487
,
496
.

45
. Dakers,
Clouds
, pp.
67
–
8
.

46
. Ibid., p.
64
.

47
. Mary Elcho to Guy Wyndham,
11
May
1877
, Stanway Papers.

48
. Mary Elcho, diary entry,
30
June
1878
, Stanway Papers.

49
. Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham,
15
July
1898
, Stanway Papers.

50
. Madeline Adeane to Madeline Wyndham,
26
July
1878
, Petworth Papers.

51
. Pamela Tennant to Madeline Wyndham,
11
December
1878
, Petworth Papers.

52
. Pamela Tennant to Percy Wyndham,
13
November
1878
, Petworth Papers.

53
.
The Times
,
10
May
1887
.

54
. MacCarthy,
The Last Pre-Raphaelite
, p.
281
.

55
.
The Times
,
1
May
1877
.

56
.
The Times
,
10
May
1887
.

57
. MacCarthy,
The Last Pre-Raphaelite
, p.
281
.

58
. For a fuller account of the Aesthetic movement and its impact upon society, see Charlotte Gere,
Artistic Circles: Design & Decoration in the Aesthetic Movement
(V&A Publishing,
2010
), and Stephen Calloway and Lynn Federle Orr (eds),
The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement
1860
–
1900
(V&A Publishing,
2011
).

59
. Mary Elcho, diary entry, quoted in Dakers,
Clouds
, p.
57
.

60
. Mary Gladstone, quoted in R. J. Q. Adams,
Balfour: The Last Grandee
(John Murray,
2008
), p.
29
.

61
. Harold Begbie (as ‘A Gentleman with a Duster’),
Mirrors of Downing Street: Some Political Reflections
(Mills & Boon,
1920
), pp.
76
–
9
.

62
. Laura Tennant to Lady Frances Balfour,
9
October [
1885
], Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD
433
/
2
/
477
.

63
. See Arthur James Balfour,
Chapters of Autobiography
, ed. Blanche Dugdale (Cassell,
1930
), p.
234
.
Chapters of Autobiography
has seventeen chapters. The first sixteen concern Balfour’s political youth. The final words of this section recollect his meeting Mary, Madeline and George Wyndham at Sir Frederic Leighton’s studio. The seventeenth chapter, tacked on somewhat incongruously, covers Balfour’s first trip to the United States in
1917
, and his subsequent diplomatic work there.

1
. Mary Elcho, diary entry,
12
May
1880
, Stanway Papers.

2
. Davidoff,
The Best Circles
, p.
25
.

3
. Dakers,
Clouds
, p.
59
.

4
. Quoted in Max Egremont,
The Cousins: The Friendship, Opinions and Activities of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt and George Wyndham
(Collins,
1977
), p.
33
.

5
. See, in particular, David Cannadine, ‘The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The British Monarchy and the “Invention of Tradition” circa
1820
–
1977
’, in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds),
The Invention of Tradition
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
1992
).

6
. Piers Brendon,
The Decline and Fall of the British Empire
1781
–
1997
(Jonathan Cape,
2007
), pp.
165
–
6
.

7
. Christopher Hibbert,
Queen Victoria: A Personal History
(HarperCollins,
2000
), pp.
320
,
362
,
367
.

8
. Quoted in A. N. Wilson,
The Victorians
(Hutchinson,
2002
), p.
449
.

9
.
The Times
,
14
March
1911
.

10
. White,
London in the Nineteenth Century
,
pp.
373
–
4
.

11
. David Cannadine,
The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy
(rev. edn, Penguin Books,
2005
), p.
347
.

12
. Quoted in Ellenberger, ‘The Souls: High Society and Politics’, p.
72
.

13
. Cannadine,
Decline and Fall
, p.
346
.

14
. Davidoff,
The Best Circles
, p.
49
.

15
. Ibid., p.
25
.

16
. Margot Asquith,
More Memories
(Cassell,
1933
), pp.
219
–
22
.

17
. Mary Elcho, ‘The Souls’, unpublished memoir, quoted in Ellenberger, ‘The Souls: High Society and Politics’, p.
45
.

18
. Mary Elcho, diary entry,
8
October
1884
, Stanway Papers.

19
. Mary Elcho, sketches, n.d., Stanway Papers.

20
. Phrenological Reports, n.d. [
c
.
1880
and
1883
], Stanway Papers.

21
. Airlie,
Thatched with Gold
, p.
40
.

22
. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour,
14
February
1905
(
Letters
, p.
218
).

23
. Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham,
3
October
1883
, Stanway Papers.

24
. Ridley and Percy,
Letters of Arthur Balfour and Lady Elcho
, p.
13
.

25
. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour,
14
February
1905
(
Letters
, p.
218
).

26
. Ibid.

27
. The claim was famously made by Lord Beaverbrook: see Ruddock F. Mackay,
Balfour: Intellectual Statesman
(Oxford, Oxford University Press,
1985
), p.
8
; Davenport-Hines,
Ettie
, p.
54
.

28
. Balfour was close friends with May (a niece of Gladstone, and cousin of Mary Gladstone), who died in
1875
, and he mourned her all his life. He was a keen spiritualist (later in life, he became President of the Society for Psychical Research, a body founded in
1882
to use scientific analysis to ‘prove’ the existence of a spirit world), and he tried several times to contact May through a medium. R.J.Q. Adams has said there is no evidence that Balfour and May, who by all accounts had a tomboy charm not dissimilar to Mary’s in her youth, were secretly engaged – or, whatever Blanche said, that Balfour asked for a ring to be put in her coffin (see Adams,
The Last Grandee
, pp.
29
–
31
). However, certainly contemporaries believed the story to be true: see Maud Wyndham to Ettie Desborough, n.d. (
1944
), Desborough Papers, HALS DE/Rv/C
2806
f.
2
, recalling at length the affair: ‘He [Balfour] put what I believe had been his mother’s engag[ement] ring into May’s coffin, saying “she wd [sic] have been my wife” … it’s impossible to make out all the “ins & outs” of the whole situation …’

29
. Begbie,
Mirrors of Downing Street
, pp.
76
–
9
.

30
. Arthur Balfour to Mary Elcho, January
1894
(
Letters
, pp.
98
–
9
).

31
. Mary Elcho to Madeline Wyndham,
7
December
1880
, Stanway Papers.